Blog Posts by Chris Willman

Linkin ParkLinkin Park has been getting huge media attention for the band's latest video, "Lost in the Echo," which is being described as a breakthrough in interactivity. Contrary to some previous interactive music videos, where you had to take the initiative of uploading imagery to become part of the clip, this "personalized film experience" does all the work for you, as long as you allow it to connect to your Facebook account and borrow imagery from what you have stockpiled there.

Of course, when Linkin Park plays the iHeartRadio Festival—a multi-superstar show in Las Vegas that will be streamed live over Yahoo!—home viewers won't have to worry about seeing themselves in the footage, unless it's in the reflective glare of the laptop or smartphone screen. For those of us who'd rather see prettier and/or more talented people than ourselves on-screen, this may be cause for a sigh of relief.

Linkin Park's rapper and multi-instrumentalist Mike Shinoda took time out from the band's tour to talk about

Brad Paisley (photo by Jim Shea)When Brad Paisley performs at the iHeartRadio Music Festival June 21-22, he isn't taking anything for granted—least of all that it'll be just his fans tuning in for the webcast, taking place live from Las Vegas. Hard as it might be to imagine he needs any more converts, Paisley's aiming to win a few when he settles into Sin City for one of his typically electrifying sets. Seems like a good gamble.

Yahoo! checked in with Paisley for an exclusive interview in advance of the show, where we queried him not just about this gig but a historic one he has coming up at the Hollywood Bowl. We also took the occasion to ask him about the new job his wife Kimberly Williams-Paisley has on the soon-to-debut ABC series Nashville, as well as being on tour with the Band Perry and Scotty McCreery, and what 2013 holds for him as a recording artist.

We all know the MTV Video Music Awards show was timed to be over on the East Coast before President Obama's speech started. But it was as if MTV also wanted to help the President by making sure nothing remotely noteworthy would happen to overshadow him in the news the next day. The Democratic National Convention thanks you, MTV; the rest of us listless viewers, not so much.

A few ups and downs from the 2012 VMAs, inasmuch as we could remember anything about the show at all a few minutes into the President's address:

Pop heavyweights like Rihanna, Drake, and Katy Perry look primed to walk away with a lot of moonmen at Thursday's MTV Video Music Awards. But not everything has been starry for them in 2012. Looking at the lineup of nominees, it's hard to find anyone who hasn't experienced a year of extreme highs and lows, from Perry's duality as new divorcee and new movie star to Lana Del Rey's riches-to-ridicule story.

Here's a look at some of the key MTV nominees—also including Frank Ocean, Chris Brown, and M.I.A.—and their extreme highs and lows this year:

Just call her Lady Nada...at least as far as this year's MTV Video Music Awards are concerned.

When the nominations for Thursday night's awards show were announced and Lady Gaga got exactly zero, it was the snub heard round the world—or at least in the lands most populated by Little Monsters. How to account for a clean shut-out of the superstar some would still consider our reigning female pop icon?

Only the collective voters know for sure, but going into this week's telecast, we've got seven theories about why she's suddenly the Invisible Lady.

1. Blowback from last year's Jo Calderone monologue. When Gaga opened last year's show doing seemingly endless improv as her male greaser alter ego, Jo Calderone, it went over about as well as Clint Eastwood at this year's Republican convention. And you don't think the GOP will be inviting Clint back to the podium in 2016, do you? There were grumblings that Gaga, who previously could do little wrong, had gotten cocky enough to think TV viewers

Britney at the 2007 VMAsIf you believe the whispers, Britney Spears might show up for a non-performing cameo appearance on Thursday night's MTV Video Music Awards. That would certainly count as a return to the scene of the crime, since for Spears, she's had a best of times/worst of times relationship with the VMAs. "Worst" came in 2007, when her jaw-droppingly terrible performance of "Gimme More" was so somnambulistic that she instantly moved up on a lot of viewers' celebrity-death-watch lists.

Among the things pregnant women should probably avoid, besides alcohol and cigarettes: any accounts of Beyonce's young motherhood. What new mom isn't going to feel like a relative loser hearing about Beyonce's rapid weight loss and full-on return to a show business career in the months following the birth of Blue Ivy? A major sensation of slackerdom is all but assured.

The upcoming MTV Video Music Awards will mark the one-year anniversary of Beyonce--who turns 31 on September 4--first revealing her baby bump to the world, as the knockout conclusion of an already highly impressive dance number last August. But it feels like so much longer than 12 months, between the lead-up to the birth, subsequent mania over every sighting or official mention of the royal child, and then Mama Bey making news since then in dozens of ways not even related to her Bey-by.

For MTV's Video Music Awards, it's really been downhill ever since the very first telecast in 1984. That was the awards show that basically presided over Madonna's shotgun marriage to pop culture, thanks to a performance that eliminated any long-standing associations between "white" and "purity" and forever made the phrases "wedding dress" and "writhing" seem perfectly appropriate together in the same sentence.